Building Strategy
From the strategist's point of view, buildings do two things: they produce pet pennies and they take up space. Pet pennies are good to have, but space is good to have too. Therefore, the best buildings take up the least amount of space while producing the most pet pennies. All buildings except for the Deluxe Toilet (4 tiles) and both Balloon Stands (2 tiles) occupy only one tile in the zoo. The space requirements are generally identical for buildings, so our focus becomes their profits. Earnings Efficiency Every building type earns a different amount of pet pennies and has a different time interval for producing this amount. By dividing these two values, we get a ratio of pet pennies earned per minute. These ratios are only important if the player is available to harvest pet pennies as soon as they are available, since PP does not accumulate beyond one cycle of earnings. For example, if a player has a Popcorn Stand which earns 125pp per hour and is available to harvest every hour, over six hours, they will earn 750pp. The Cotton Candy Stand, which earns 250pp every six hours, earns 500pp less in the same time frame. It appears that the Popcorn Stand is a better choice, and in some cases it is, but there are other factors to consider. Player's Availability For Collection It doesn't matter what a building's efficiency number is, if a player isn't there to collect, the pet pennies aren't earned. Players should consider how often they will be available to collect from their buildings. We saw earlier that a dedicated player could expect to get 500pp more from the Popcorn Stand versus the Cotton Candy Stand. If the player was only able to log in to the game once in the morning and once at night, however, they'd earn 500pp from the Cotton Candy Stand, but only 250pp from the Popcorn Stand, giving the Cotton Candy Stand a +250pp advantage. |style="vertical-align:top;"| |} The Best Buildings From the table (and the graph below), we can see that the Popcorn Stand is by far the most efficient building, earning 125pp per hour. The downfall of the Popcorn Stand is its cost, 25,000pp, and the fact that it only becomes available at level 30. It is the last building made available to players. In contrast, the second most efficient building, the Feeding Station, is available at level 2 for only 150pp. It is the earliest available building, and earns 50pp every half hour. It might appear that players should just stick to Feeding Stations, after all, for the cost of one Popcorn Stand, over 160 Feeding Stations could be purchased, and these would earn in excess of 16,000 more than that Popcorn Stand. The advantage of the Popcorn Stand is the space factor. A player has a limited amount of space, and simply put, Popcorn Stands produce more pet pennies than Feeding Stations with the same amount of space. Farming Pet Pennies While a zoo can hold both animal habitats and buildings, one strategy is to fill the zoo with Feeding Stations and to collect pet pennies for a period of weeks. Once a player has farmed enough pet pennies to last a while, they remove all buildings, storing them, and fill the zoo with animal habitats to collect as much experience as possible. When the Secret Zoo becomes available, players may choose to designate this space as their "PP Farm." Category:Strategy